I and basically everyone I know love it because it and android auto are made by actual UI/UX designers that aren’t embedded systems engineers- resulting in an infotainment screen that isn’t a complete and utter piece of shit, and has actual functionality. I use my phone for everything in my car anyways, especially navigation, which historically is not included in a cars infotainment system without subscription and/or vendor lock. In that one singular regard, CarPlay is literally infinity percent better than every single built in infotainment system, because I can use my fucking cars built in screen instead of my tiny phone display to navigate using software that is infinitely more well made than whatever shit is on my cars native system (a brief note: my angry tone is not directed at you or your lack of agreement with my opinion, but at how awful I perceived the car infotainment systems of yore to be. God they were useless.)
For every objective measure I can come up with in my head and not type out, it passes with flying colors compared to the alternative- so I’d love to know where your perception differs.
It isn’t as bad as most built-in over developed systems, but it has not quite reached the perfection of a cheap phone mount and a car that is dumb enough to act as a Bluetooth speaker.
This is not a counterpoint to your argument. It's more a context about the following question: Is the infotainment on a car actually useful?
Vehicles should be designed to last ten years so that the resale market can support the ridiculous prices for new. The infotainment system is the only part that is subject to external technological compatibility issues over that timespan.
While it may be constructive to point out and discuss that, hey CarPlay has deficiencies and really could stand to be improved in XYZ way, vaguely gesturing at CarPlay and saying “I don’t get why people love this so much” and tacitly implying they’re wrong or stupid for doing so, is just unhelpful.
If you’d have started the whole conversation with “I get why people appreciate the improvement, but CarPlay still sucks because it doesn’t work well in vehicles you don’t own”, we’d be having an entirely different conversation right now, actually discussing and commiserating the downsides and technical limitations that Apple should definitely fix.
But alas, the message implied by “why do people like this if it’s objectively bad”, is that said people are stupid- not that we should do it. And “objectively bad” is also super broad, and dismissive of the all of the things that a lot of people probably consider objectively good, like the decoupling of updates from auto manufacturers, and some of the UI/UX behavior hereto undescribed.
I wasn’t so much fervently defending “my baby” as I was: explaining “why people love it so much”, which was the question asked; bitching about the systems of yesteryear because they sucked ass more notably than CarPlay does, at least imo; and objecting to the premise of your discussion hook for being vague and (very mildly) inflammatory.
Your response is also inflammatory. Id have loved to complain about the downsides of CarPlay and where it fails, but you basically just called me a whiny fanboy for, at the core of my response, objecting to a contentless question.
It could definitely be better; but given a choice of figuring out how to pair AA/CP in a rental car, or working with the built-in nav (which has no idea about my schedule, locations, etc)... I _always_ select pairing AA/CP.
You proved my point too, in that you were unnecessarily shitty about your difference of opinion, because you're objectively a weird fucking asshole.